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Date: | Wed, 12 Mar 1997 19:56:45 -0500 |
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Barbara asks: Anyone care to discuss the ethics of direct marketing of
breast pumps to hospitalized new mothers by staff who also have private
depots or pump
>sales businesses? Is this fair game, the convenient provision of needed
>products, or is this a conflict of interest?
I too have concerns about this issue. I have heard tales of a staff nurse
rents pumps out of her van in the hospital parking lot! This is an
extreme case; nonetheless, it poses many questions for me.
1) As Marsha said in her post, no hospitals allow staff to sell Tupperware
to patients. How are staff who directly market their side-businesses to
patients any different?
2) If rental/sales pumps are readily available, mightn't staff be quicker
to over-encourage their use? It is easy to see how this practice has
innocently evolved from the nurse with a home depot who brought in a rental
pump for a mom with a premie. Sounds like it has gotten way out of hand in
some settings, though.
Personally, I no longer rent breastpumps or sell BF aids for a number of
reasons, one of which my personal concern that ready availability of
gadgets might tempt me to overuse them. (Of course it helped that
competent equipment rental/sales agents were available in my area.)
I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this.
Cindy Turner-Maffei
Massachusetts, USA
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